


Weightless

by Greenninjagal



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Also I invented my own lore for selkies, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders-centric, Djinn!Patton, Found Family, Gorgon!Logan, Humans Suck, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Incubus!Roman, Multi, Ocean, Selkie!Virgil, Two Shot, Virgil deserves some hugs alright, because that's something I can do, monster au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 09:12:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17915978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenninjagal/pseuds/Greenninjagal
Summary: The pictures had circulated the town for three days. Then the police came to him and told him that there was no way to find the people who had attacked him on the beach, so sorry.Virgil is sorry, too. So sorry, in fact, that he has already decided when he finds them he’s going to kill them, himself in many painful ways.***Aka Virgil misses the weight of his skin and doesn't trust anyone anymore. Not even his strange (assumed) human housemates.





	1. Chapter 1

Virgil needs to stop sleeping on the couch. Really, it’s been a month since he’s moved into the building and he has his own room, with a door that locks, the windows that shut all the way, and headphones that blare the sound of the ocean waves as loud as he wanted. He doesn’t need to be out in the common area, taking up the entire couch, headphones on and buried under as many blankets as he can get away with.

 

He’s sure he’s annoying his housemates with it too. Every once in a while he picks up on the presence of one or two of them skirting through the area, once or twice he’s heard the disgruntled huffs of one of them coming into the room and leaving again when they see Virgil was there again, once or twice he feels guilty about hoarding every single blanket he can find and dreads when the others will finally call him out on it, but not enough to return them.

 

He’s sweating profusely under all of them, but he burrows himself deeper, arching his aching shoulder blades. The heat won’t bother him, if he can just...manage...to get the...weight right.

 

(It’s not right.)

 

((It won’t ever be right.))

 

He hates it, every bit of it. He peeks out from under the mass of fabrics to check the time on his phone. He missed dinner again, but that was fine. Patton always makes too much and stuffs it in the fridge with Virgil’s name already taped on.

 

He pauses the calming sounds of “daybreak on the seashore”, and listens intently for the sounds of the other man in the kitchen. There isn’t any telltale clink of the silverware, no humming of the microwave, nor the whooshing of the water running as he finishes up cleaning the dishes. There isn’t even the whistling that Patton seems to carry everywhere with him.

 

Actually, Virgil has to take that back. He doesn’t think he has heard Patton whistle since Logan had asked him to stop in that rude monotone he had the other day. Patton is strangely attune to everyone’s personal preferences. Once someone asks him to do something he, almost immediately, gets it done. Concerning? Maybe. But Virgil can’t bring himself to care much. Patton is pretty much the only human he could stand, probably for that reason only. 

 

(Jeez Virgil really hates humans. Why did he agree to live with three of them?)

 

Not that it mattered much. Virgil knows he’s dying. It wouldn’t be long before one of them gets irritated with him and digs under the blankets just to find his dead corpse. Virgil hopes, maybe a bit darkly, that it will be Roman who finds him, and that his particularly childish scream can be heard in the deep pits of hell Virgil’s sure to end up in for wishing something like that on someone. 

 

Though to be fair, Roman is a bit of an asshole. He’s everything Virgil hates about humans wrapped into one stupidly tall, stupidly fit body. He’s bold and brazen, reckless and loud, not to mention chaotic. His first instinct when he makes someone else angry is to start flirting, and flashing that seductive grin of his as if he can make every bad thing go away with a smile. He  _ never  _ apologizes. He’s forgetful-- or just holds a certain disregard for anyone other than himself: Virgil had asked him to move his laundry before he went out for the evening two nights ago and Virgil had ended up having to move it so that he could get his own laundry done. Additionally, he never seems to be focused on what was in front of him, regardless of what it was.

 

The only good thing is that he prefers to go out nearly every night so Virgil very rarely has to interact with him. Roman at least has the decency to not to bring home the people he was clearly sleeping with, if his messy hair, crumple clothes, and the glimpses of hickies that were nearly never subtle on his collarbone, were anything to go by. Virgil doesn’t want to know what sort of things Roman gets into.

 

Virgil is at least thankful that Roman had gone out tonight. He had been stuck in the house for the past two days, moping about something or other and making everyone else equally as miserable as he was about it by loudly complaining anytime he saw them.

 

Humans are such a vile sort of race anyway.

 

If Virgil is being honest, though, he’d much rather spend time with Logan than the other two. Where Patton is constantly buzzing with energy and seems to ask Virgil if he needs something, anything, every few minutes, and while Roman has an ego deeper than the Marianas Trench and constantly strives to prove it, Logan is a stone statue.

 

He stays cooped up in his room for the most part, only venturing out on a rare occasion to eat something, or read a book in the common area. Virgil doesn’t think he has ever seen him without his shades either: Logan wears the thick heavy black sunglasses that made it impossible to see in the house when dusk hit. Regardless Logan has determined that he’d rather stumble into the walls, or trip on the steps rather than take the glasses off. It’s certainly a dedication.

 

He alludes a type of contained energy that’s opposite to Patton. Every movement he makes is calculated, even the ones that ram him into the walls. He’s always calm, speaks in a monotone, and he likes the stars.

 

Virgil used to like the stars. He doesn’t anymore. They just make him sick.

 

He props open the layers of blankets he has around himself letting in a gulp of fresh cool air that should feel as good as it does. If Virgil turns back on his music, and closes his eyes really tight he could fall victim to the delusion that he was back in the water feeling the caress of the waves welcoming him back after so long.

 

But Virgil isn’t in the habit of lying to himself, so he closes out of his music app and rearranges the blankets so that he can sit up. His clothes are a sticky, crumpled, disappointing mess. He tugs the zipper of his black sweatshirt down a few inches and wishes that it weighed more, that it was purple, that humans weren't such giant assholes, that he wasn’t an idiot.

 

Because really when it came down to it, the whole situation had been Virgil’s fault. He had been naive and absent minded and even though he knew the stories about human, knew that they couldn’t be trusted, Virgil had still allowed them to get as close as they had.

 

The humans hadn’t killed him, but Virgil finds himself wishing more and more often that they had. It would have been quicker than the death he was currently living. 

 

Virgil stretches lightly, his shoulders aching miserably from an issue he couldn’t fix. He had been over the seaside town with a fine-tooth comb: there was no sign of the humans that he had encountered that night. His memory is hazy and with every passing day it became worse, but he had become prepared for this. The second he had woken up in the human hospital he had scrambled for pen and paper and scratched out every detail of the four he could remember. Curly hair, a lip piercing, a red bandana, a skull and rose tattoo--He had drawn it all up for the police and then made himself a copy because the police were also humans and humans couldn’t be trusted.

 

The pictures had circulated the town for three days. Then the police came to him and told him that there was no way to find the people who had attacked him on the beach, so sorry.

 

Virgil is sorry, too. So sorry, in fact, that he has already decided when he finds them he’s going to kill them himself in many painful ways. He’d make them feel every ounce of pain he feels. He was going to make them beg for a merciful death.

 

(It was rational, he told himself. Revenge for everything they had done to him)

 

((It was rational, he told himself. Because he was likely never going to find them anyway.))

 

So he is stranded: standing on the cliffside feeling the sea spray with every crashing wave, and knowing if he so much as dipped his feet in the oncoming waves he’d dissolve into seafoam.

 

He had never told anyone he was leaving, never mentioned that he was going to sit on the beach and stare up at those dazzling stars. No one would come looking for him because no one was as stupid as he was.

 

It’s a human world after all. And everyone knows that humans poked and prodded things they didn’t understand, and turned a profit for the things they did.

 

Death had sounded preferable to both options. But Virgil couldn’t bring himself to...do it. The thought of ending it all terrified him, the thought of the waves calling for him made him determined not to. He has to find a way to get back.

 

He has to find his skin again. And in order to do that he has to find the humans who had stolen it in the first place. 

 

So he continued this charade of being human: got a job writing a comedy column for the newspaper that printed twice a week, found a place to rent with three other people, and pronounced himself a shut in that rarely talked. 

 

He’s sure the others thought he was mute or deaf (Roman probably thought both), seeing as he attempts to not acknowledge them at all. He’s slightly paranoid that if he does allow himself to drop his guard again they’ll find something else to take from him. 

 

Virgil doesn’t lie to himself and he most certainly learns from his mistakes.

 

So even if Patton tries his best to offer him free food, to talk to him, to be his friend, Virgil doesn’t give him an inch. (A human saying: give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile.) He lets the plates of extra food in the refrigerator go bad, wears headphones whenever he was in the room with any of them, doesn’t answer his door on the rare occasion that Patton did come knocking.

 

Falling asleep on the couch was more of an accident turned habit than anything else. His room doesn’t have a window that faced the beach, but the common area did. He had come out there to work on his newest piece for the paper (a diary of an alien encountering normal human things written purely for laughs. It wasn’t supposed to have become a permanent thing but the editors had liked it so much they had offered him a salary). Somewhere between the writing and staring out the window his eyes had started to droop and he had found himself curled up on the sofa.

 

And someone, Patton most likely, had made the mistake of throwing a blanket over Virgil’s sleeping body.

 

And for a second-- a split second-- when Virgil had woken up, it had felt exactly like wearing his skin, like nothing was wrong, like everything was normal.

 

Then he had shifted and it had been all wrong again. Virgil had desperately hoarded all the blankets he could get his hands on and attempted to very valiantly to recreate the feeling. But it wasn’t right, wasn’t enough. The habit had been formed and Virgil had taken to sleeping on the couch instead of in his room.

 

He glances to the window, somewhat impressed with his own ability to have wasted most of the day. He swears just minutes ago the sun had been rising and dolphins breaking on the distance waves, and now it was all dark and black with the stars thankfully hidden behind a thin cloud layer.

 

His shoulders feel too light, his back feels too exposed, but Virgil resigns himself to standing up. His spine pops in a refreshing sort of way. He faintly wonders if he’s hungry-- he had found that humans tended to eat so much; Patton made food in the kitchen at least  _ three  _ times a day. Virgil is so used to binge eating once a day that it makes his head spin when he realizes that Patton’s trying to foist food off on him  _ again _ . 

 

Apparently, it’s really unhealthy for humans to eat as little as Virgil did. But that makes sense because Virgil isn’t human, and there isn’t really a way for him to fix that. It’s one of the few things about himself he can’t hide. 

 

Plan for now: binge eat all the food he needs now that Patton and Logan were most likely asleep and Roman was out, scroll through what he had written last night, make the necessary edits and submit it to the editors, and then go to his room to do more searches on the nameless humans that had ruined his life that would ultimately get him nowhere. Then he’s going to sleep unsatisfied and miserable just as he had done every other day of the past nine months, two weeks, and one day, since he had been exiled from his home.

 

Virgil doesn’t even make it to the kitchen.

 

He barely gets around the coffee table (kept neat and tidy from Patton’s meticulous housekeeping) when he hears the telltale sound of the front door being unlocked. Virgil freezes with a glare narrowed towards the entrance, as if glaring at the door could scare it into refusing to open. It was late, far too late for it to be anyone other than Roman.

 

\--And he wasn’t alone.

 

The door swings open with a clattering bang and no regard for the elegant beach shadow boxes framed on the walls. The noise is vicious and vile and followed by a tumbling of bodies into the house, that are so close together Virgil can barely make out the differences between Roman and his friend. One of them slams the other into the wall and they are kissing like they were slightly more than just friends.

 

(“Slightly” meaning “a lot”)

 

Virgil isn’t quite at a lost of what to do-- it was more of a paralysis on  _ what the fuck  _ than anything else. He knows that Roman is human and humans have a habit of constantly seeking out...partners for the night. But Roman was very good about not bringing those partners back with him, excellent really. It was his  _ only  _ redeeming quality.

 

And yet here he is, ruining the only good thing about himself. And Virgil is watching. 

 

Fuck, he walks through that hall every single day. Why is Roman  _ trying desecrate it? _

 

Virgil must have made a noise, something, because without warning one of the forms peels back and looks down the hall at him. Moonlight streams in between them leaving Virgil with a perfect view of Roman pressed against the wall, flushed, and seemingly covered in glitter, swollen lips parted in a breathless smile that drops almost as quickly as it had appeared. Virgil swears for a second his eyes were a fiery red, but he blinks and they ware brown again.

 

“Virgil,” He scowls.

 

The stranger, however, laughs. “Hey pretty boy, get lost. Or join in!”

 

And Virgil is ready to flee. His feet are bouncing, his brain screams all sorts of profanity at Roman, he is stomach is already bubbling with nausea. Everything points at him to run, run as fast as he can, to his room, to lock the door, to scrub that terrible look on Roman’s face out of his memory.

 

But then Roman rolls up the wall in an attempt to regain his balance and his shoulder hits the lightswitch. And suddenly the narrow hallway floods with the golden light, too bright. It’s wrong. It’s wrong, it’s so wrong.

 

Virgil’s chest constritches and he meets the eyes of the last person he ever expected to be standing in front of him again.

 

Because Virgil would know that face, know that silver lip piercing, the curly hair, the ripped vest, and the red bandana tied around his upper arm. Virgil would know that human because he was the nameless, cruel being that had helped try to kill him. 

 

And Virgil knows he’s not hallucinating because the second they make eye contact, the stranger’s eyes go wide and he freezes as if he had just seen a ghost.

 

“You--”

 

The door flinging open had been loud, but Virgil’s certain the explosion of all the water pipes in the house is louder. He barely even notices that he does it. Anger swallows his entire body, swamping him, drowning him, and Virgil  _ lets  _ it. Every thought turns violent and raging, a massive swell of  _ kill it, kill it, kill it, find skin, kill it, kill it, kill it and it’s friends. _

 

Virgil throws himself towards the man hands out and itching to wrap his throat and  _ squeeze  _ the fragile human life from his chest, prolonging it as long as he can, because that’s exactly what it feels like when Virgil stands on the beach with the burning grainy sand in his shoes and stares at the Ocean he can never return to. He wants the death of that man so much he loses all sense of his surroundings.

 

Particularly that of Logan coming down the stairs at the same moment.

 

It happens in a sort of slow motion that Virgil has never experienced before. Logan collides with him full body, and they both tumble to the floor, hard. Virgil rolls and scrambles to get back to his feet. Something crunches under his shoes. Roman elbows the stranger to the side, but it's too hard and the man falls to the ground. Virgil lunges for him, teeth gnashing in the most inhuman display he’s allowed himself to perform in nine months. Roman blocks him with a surprising strength.

 

At the same time, Logan blearily looks up from the floor and makes eye contact with the fallen stranger.

 

The man screams for a second, something brutal, gutted, and horrified. It’s the sound of someone who just saw Hell and realized they were falling in it. It’s the sound that causes Roman to freeze. It’s the sound that lasts a single second and no more because it takes all of that second for him to turn completely to stone.

 

Solid stone. 

 

Logan lets out a scream curling in on himself and burying his face in one hand as the other claws the ground for glasses he’s not going to find. Virgil doesn’t care. It’s terrifying really, how strong his tunnel vision suddenly becomes and he digs his nails in Roman’s distracted arm as he struggles to get around him, to get to that body, to get his answers and his revenge.

 

“Fuck!” Roman yells, drawing back when Virgil draws blood.

 

There’s the body right within his grasp. Red tints his vision. A giddiness that has not right to be there floods his veins, intoxicating and addicting and  _ Kill it kill it kill kill-- _

 

Strong arms wrap his waist dragging him back. Virgil struggles, he kicks, he screams. Pipes burst across the house, probably across the block, and distantly the waves pound the shore with an unprecedented force. Something pricks his neck, sharp.

 

The next thing Virgil knows everything is blurring together. The screaming in his head subsides as suddenly as it comes, and the silence is more terrifying. There’s always noise in his head, always dreams, feelings, opinions. It’s silent and Virgil can’t even produce a single thought.

 

The strong arms let go. He falls like a ragdoll to the tap-water covered floor without even a movement to catch himself. He can’t move even if he tried.

 

He doesn’t try.

 

It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s really so wrong.

 

What’s wrong? Virgil doesn’t remember. 

 

Blue smoke wells up in the room, starting from somewhere outside his direct vision. It smells like something sweet and sugary that Virgil doesn’t know the name of. He loses consciousness before he figures it out if it’s even real or not.

 

(It’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.)


	2. Chapter 2

“--a week or two. I don’t know I gave him a lot.” Roman’s voice says weakly. Virgil is rather annoyed it’s the first thing he hears when he wakes up. On a good day he hates hearing Roman’s condescending tone, on a bad day Virgil contemplates adding him to the list of humans he wants to kill.

 

What was Roman doing in his room? 

 

No, wait he wasn’t in his room. Damn, he needed to stop falling asleep couch. 

 

Really, it’s been a month since he’s moved into the building and he has his own room, with a door that locks, the windows that shut all the way, and headphones that blare the sound of the ocean waves as loud as he wanted. He doesn’t need to be out in the common area, taking up the entire couch, headphones on and buried under as many blankets as he can get away with.

 

He’s sure he’s annoying his housemates with it too. Every once in a while he picks up on the presence of one or two of them skirting through the area---

 

Wait a second.

 

“Don’t give me that look! You saw him!”

 

Virgil’s had that thought before. He knows he’s had that thought before.

 

“I didn’t see anything.” Logan’s voice replies tersely with an edge that is unlike him. Logan doesn’t rise to emotion, ever. But here he was talking like he ever word was meant to be a barbed attack.

 

“Oh yeah I forgot, specs!” Even when he sounds like he’s still recovering from being hit by an eighteen wheeler, he manages to sound like the sarcastic asshole he was. “And when were you going to tell the rest of us about the stone eyes ability you suddenly possess?”

 

Virgil’s missing something. There’s an important bit of information, and it feels like its just on the tip off his tongue, on the brink of his consciousness.

 

“Guys,” Patton’s voices is strained, but he sounds more worried than anything else. “Let’s not fight.”

 

Whatever, he’s never cared about his housemates before. Where are his headphones? He wants to crank up the sound of the ocean and pretend it’s dragging Roman under its unforgiving surface again and again and again.

 

He wants to pretend nothing is wrong.

 

- _ ongwroNGWRONG WRONG WRONG _

 

It feels like an alarm that had been going on in his head for years that Virgil hadn’t even noticed until that moment. All at once his brain is screaming, crying, wailing for him to listen. The noise, his noise, the familiar noise of his thoughts comes roaring back and it  _ drowns  _ the dull sleepiness on his brain. 

 

Virgil reacts like someone stuck jumper cables to his temples. The blind panic of it jolts down his spine awakening every limb with a flood of shaky adrenalin. He’s sitting up before his eyes have even opened. (Granted his vision blurs and waves together and the blood behind his eyes pounds so hard he has to hold back a scream, but he’s sitting up. Ready to defend himself.)

 

He knows someone else screams. By the time his vision clears enough for him to make sense of his surroundings (common room couch, blankets folded, coffee table cleared and cleaned and his reflection bouncing off the glass window barrier from the peaceful night) Roman, Logan, and Patton are all looking at him with varying degrees of horror. Virgil’s body sways but he’s determined not to fall back down, not to fall back unconscious no matter how loudly it beacons him.

 

“How the  _ fuck  _ are you awake?” Roman rasps from the opposite end of the couch, his skin pale, and his body tense. There are scratch marks on his arm wrapped tightly with gauze, and a tiny bit of fear in his expression that Virgil’s mind struggles to explain.

 

“Language!” Patton scolds, but even he looks a breath away from a heart attack, a step away from Logan wearing different dark tinted glasses than normal. Why? Why why why why-

 

“I gave you enough to kill an elephant!” Roman yells, pressing himself as far away from Virgil as he can get.

 

Virgil doesn’t know what he’s saying, doesn’t know what is going on. Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck.  _ His brain can’t focus on anything, and his vision keeping dancing between hyperfocus and unrecognizable blur. His chest heaves but every inhale is a fight. He’s panicking. He knows he’s panicking. Something foreign is in his body and it’s trying to smother his awareness. 

 

“What…” Virgil’s words come out slurred, every push of his tongue is a battle, “What did you... do to me?”

 

A shooting pain in his neck. His fingers feel like led dragging over the spot with absolute horror. There’s indents there-- why are there indents? Virgil’s never had indents there.

 

“Is this... a  _ bite mark _ ?”

 

Virgil’s head pounds, that alarm in his head screams so loud he can’t hear any other thought.  _ What happened what did he do what did the human do to him-- _

 

He nearly misses Logan straightening in his seat and shifting his glasses ever so slightly. “Interesting, Roman,” he says in the calmest monotone Virgil has ever heard, “I was not informed that one or two weeks now meant roughly an hour.”

 

“Logan!” Patton throws a hand over his mouth, but Virgil’s certain it’s hiding a smile.

 

Roman’s head swivels to face to other with a partial snarl on it, “Hey you don’t have room to talk! You weren’t going to tell us that you can transform people to stone with a glance!”

 

Virgil’s stomach drops out, “What?”

 

Logan turns that stare on him, the dark lenses of his glasses pulling like a shadow over the other others eyes but Virgil is acutely aware of his iris movement behind them. “You don’t remember?” He doesn’t wait for Virgil to ask what he doesn’t remember; Logan turns accusingly towards Roman, “He doesn’t remember?”

 

Roman’s nose scrunches up, half a sneer on his face. Virgil’s head pounds and he wonders ideally if this was his time to die. Could he just drop dead right here on the sofa? With his body aching in every sense of the word, his mind stuffed with cotton, and surrounded by people he doesn’t trust?

 

“It happens sometimes!” Roman says unapologetically, “A side effect! He’s not even supposed to be awake! No human wakes up that fast! I--”

 

“Human?” Virgil repeats, before he can stop himself.

 

“Virgil, kiddo,” Patton says soothingly, “why don’t you lie back down--”

 

“You think I--me-- am a human?” Virgil repeats. 

 

It takes him a moment to remember that  _ fuck, that was not information he was supposed to be sharing.  _ His tongue felt like lead, fumbling over his his teeth as if he could take the words out of the air before any of them heard them.

 

“You’re no--” Patton blinks

 

“Of course!” Roman shouts with his booming boastful voice that Virgil hates more than anything else about him. The other flings himself off the couch hands dancing in the air as if he were composing some sort of ballad. “It makes sense!”

 

Virgil presses his back into the sofa, hands so tight that his knuckles are turning white. He thinks that if Roman has any good sense he’ll keep out of kicking range, because Virgil doesn’t do well being cornered and human kneecaps are very vulnerable.

 

Except that when Roman twists around to face him again he’s grinning brightly-- too brightly, too charismatically, his lips shining, twisting in that ever appealing way that Virgil still hasn’t figured out how to ignore. There’s sparkles on him again, shimmering on his hair like tiny glittering water droplets. His stance is overtly confident, as he smiles, and his eyes are undoubtedly, unabashedly, red.

 

“You’re not human!” Roman says gleefully, showing off this pointed teeth. “That’s how you wore off my venom so fast!”

 

“Venom?” Virgil repeats, a dash of anger breaking through the cotton in his mind. “ _ What  _ venom?!”

 

“You’re also not human,” Logan notes. Virgil steals a glance at him, as he carefully takes off his glasses with eyes firmly closed and proceeds to clean them. There’s pale green skin around his eyes and eyelids that look like eyeshadow, but with a swoop of his stomach Virgil remembers exactly what Roman had said about Logan turning  _ someone  _ to stone. 

 

Logan’s not human. Roman’s not human. Virgil’s not human.

 

“Oh dear,” Patton whispers. 

 

From where he’s standing Virgil is acutely aware that Patton could go screaming to the entire city block. Every person who had ever come in contact with the supernatural world would be flooding their little beach hovel and Virgil wasn’t sure he could survive being thrown off a cliff again. It’s what any sane normal human would do.

 

Virgil feels the water in the house, and he feels it the moment it bursts (all too easily, as if it had done it before). The kitchen sink explodes, the piping in the walls ruptures, a flood of water shoots in the room without a direction.

 

Logan’s eyes flicker open and shut before Virgil has any sense to blink, and the other man shoves his glasses back on so forcibly they nearly break in his hands. Roman splutters as he gets a face full of the cold liquid, tripping backwards over the coffee table. Virgil dives to the floor, nearly biting off his tongue when his chin his the hardwood floor. The liquid rains, and for a second Virgil is filled with an impossible bliss at just  _ seeing  _ it he can’t force himself to move before he’s also soaked.

 

(It’s wrong! It’s not salty! It’s not the ocean, ocean, ocean.)

 

((The ocean will kill him if he touches it without his skin.))

 

Then as suddenly as it had begun, as suddenly as Virgil had recognized he had done it, it’s gone again. Virgil stares as the room is flooded with the scent of sugar and blue raspberry clouds. The world seems to stop, pause,  _ breathe _ . The pressure that forced the water to break froze and Virgil can feel it instantly retreat.

 

Then the water rises up from the floor, pulls back from Roman, draws out of his Virgil’s owe clothes and returns to the pipes it broke out of. The pipe mends itself, the sink fits back in place, and the wall folds back into place until it looks like it never happened before.

 

Across the room, Patton stands lock in half concentration, half happiness with one hand outstretched, his fingers and the tips of his ears an icy, vibrant, and totally-not-human blue. Unearthly matching blue smoke dances at his feet until the job is complete, then when he lowers his hand it fades like an illusion, leaving him appearing every bit of the human he wasn’t.

 

Virgil can’t breathe and it has nothing to do with the venom Roman may or may not have injected him with.

 

There's a silence in the house that none of them can break. Not even Roman, whose voice had annoyingly persisted throughout the house for the past week every time that Virgil had tried to find quiet time. Not even Patton who had been an unending well of happiness and conversation, even when Virgil refused to acknowledge him. Not even Logan’s whose simple side comments made being in the same room as him not suck. The silence stuck in the air as heavy as oil until Virgil couldn’t stand it.

 

“ _ What  _ are you?”

 

“What are  _ you _ ?” Roman shoots back, “You’re the one who keeps doing that! The water! Do you know how much time goes into getting my hair--”

 

“You  _ bit  _ me!”

 

“You scratched me!”

 

Virgil hisses, “I probably had a good reason!”

 

“Yeah, because you’re psychotic!”

 

“STOP!” Patton yells over whatever Virgil is replying. Virgil tenses, at the sharpness of his voice, instinctively curling away and glaring at Roman. Roman dismisses him shortly.

 

“I’m not stopping! He’s a menace! Nine months of living in the house with him and he has done nothing but be an ass to all of us! Ignoring us, disregarding us, stealing our blankets--” Roman grabs one from the couch shaking it at Virgil like that could make him regret it. All is does is make Virgil’s shoulders ache again. 

 

“Then he just goes berserk in one night?!” Roman says hotly, “You’re the reason why humans hunt us down and kill us.” 

 

Virgil recoils like he’s been hit-- and really he has been. Every bit of anger in him stirs at Roman’s words, stirs and sizzles and bubbles. What does Roman know about being hunted and killed? What gives him the right to say anything about this? He might not be human but he was close enough: self absorbed and toxic and--

 

“I’m not the one who brought home a fucking  _ hunter _ !”

 

Virgil freezes at his own words. He tries to find the proof in his memory, sifting through the cotton trying to pick out exactly why he’s sure without a doubt that Roman had done something so stupid. He scratches on it, a vague shapeless thing that fills him with terror.

 

“You brought home a hunter,” He repeats.

 

“What?” Roman laughs, “No? I--no!”

 

Virgil throws a hand over his mouth to keep himself from vomiting. Vertigo hits him hard, like it had when he had first woken up and found them all sitting there staring at him. 

 

“I didn’t!” Roman tugs his collar, “He would have told me! They always tell me!”

 

Silver lip piercing, the curly hair, the ripped vest, and the red bandana tied around his upper arm, Virgil remembers. He bites into his hand, trying to muffle the scream. He had been right there, Virgil had been standing right in front of one of the men who had ruined his life.

 

Coldness floods over him.

 

“Where is he?” Virgil demands hoarsely, “What happened to him?”

 

Logan makes an uncomfortable sound that has no place coming from his general direction.

 

“Logan turned him to stone,” Roman says, “So problem solved! No more hunter! No one saw us so no one will be coming here--”

 

“Roman!” Patton wrings the hem of his shirt, in distress, “Killing people is not the answer!”

 

“Hunters do it to people like us everyday!”

 

Virgil barely hears them, “Where is he?”

 

“There’s nothing to worry about--”

 

“Where the fucking hell is he!” Virgil shouts.

 

Roman and Logan both make a point not to look towards the kitchen. Virgil scrambles to his feet nearly toppling over yet again. Blood rushes in his ears, his too-light shoulders make him feel off balanced. He trips into the kitchen area.

 

There’s a statue there, standing with a face of repulsion on its face. It’s lifelike. Virgil wants to cry, because it’s standing right there and in the darkness of the early morning Virgil can almost convince himself that it’s still living.

 

“Virgil,” Patton’s voice says quietly.

 

“Fix it,” Virgil pleads. “Please, fix it like you fixed the wall or whatever, please just--”

 

“I can’t.” Patton said eyes too big to be lying, “Djinn can’t interfere with life and death. I tried, but he’s gone.”

 

“He can’t be!” Virgil shudders wrapping his arms around his stomach, “He can’t be dead. I need him to not be dead!” Part of him realizes it’s completely unfair that this is the most he’s ever talked to any of them and here he is asking them to bring a known hunter back to life with the chance that they’ll escape and bring the entire town down on them.

 

“Virgil,” Patton says again and it horribly sad. 

 

Oh fuck he’s pretty sure he’s crying.

 

“He can’t be dead,” Virgil says stubbornly. He feels like a little kid again, curled up on the sandy beach to look at the stars in the sky that he couldn’t see from the ocean, and  _ wish, wish, wishing  _ all the bad things away from himself.

 

And suddenly the ache for that stupid kid is so strong Virgil can’t inhale again. The kid who effortlessly jumped from the cliffs with blackflips and breathed in the salty water, the kid who hoarded shiny pebbles and went to the surface to star at the stars, the kid who thought aimlessly, naively, that the humans weren’t nearly as bad as everyone had always said they were. He wants to go back to that kid and shake him hard, because seeing the stars had not been worth it that night or any of the ones after it.

 

“What are you crying for?” Roman demands, but Patton shushes him quickly. He kneels next to Virgil--when did Virgil get on the floor?

 

“Virgil, I don’t know what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours,” he says, “But I promise everything is going to be okay. We’re safe and we’re home--”

 

Virgil shakes his head, harsher than he means to. Because this place is not his home, because he can’t find the words to explain this, can’t figure out why any of them should care.

 

Virgil hates the human world. It’s stupid, terrible, and frustrating. Everything he does feels wrong: the air is too thin and their no current in it, the sun is too bright and blistering hot, the people are strange and foreign. Virgil thinks as he sits on the ground in front of a statue probably sobbing, that he hates this world more now than he did before.

 

Distantly he’s aware of the waves rolling over the shore with malicious sorrow, washing the sand again and again, as Patton reaches out and cups his upper arm in what he supposes must be a comforting gesture. The skin on skin contact feel dry and brittle and Virgil wishes hates it as much as he loves it.

 

“Virgil,” Logan’s tone cuts through his thoughts like a knife, piercing in to the dull throb of his head, “What did he take from you?”

 

Virgil hiccups so hard his stomach rolls over. He has a million lies ready and on his tongue waiting to be delivered but none of them come out.

 

“My s-skin,” He chokes.

 

“Your what-now?” Roman echoes sounding offended.

 

Logan nods solemnly like that was expected, “His skin. He’s a selkie.”

 

“A  _ what _ ?” 

 

Virgil wonders if he can convince Patton that killing people is alright if the only person he kills is Roman. His exhale shudders his entire body, and he leans into the touch of the-- Djinn? Is that what he called himself?

 

Logan twists his watch around his wrist, “A selkie. They are a water race that primarily tend to stay towards the bottom of the ocean and not cause trouble. Unlike mermaids.” He clicks his tongue distastefully which against all odds makes Virgil want to laugh. “If I remember correctly they have skins that act much like the human form of a jacket. Taking it off allows them to walk on land.”

 

Roman makes a face. “So you just…” He mimes unzipping a jacket from his forehead. “That’s pretty creepy.” Patton shoots him a glare that Virgil gladly doubles. 

 

“What! Objectively! You’re a creepy cookie!” Roman shakes his arms out and then wraps them around himself.

 

“I do not think you have room to talk, Roman. You create a narcotic from your salivary glands that can instantly put any creature into a coma, so you can do what exactly?” Logan asks. “I’m surprised humans are not more fearful of your kind than they are of anything else.”

 

Roman’s smile turns a little to sharp, “Low blows coming from someone with Gorgon blood in them.” He shakes out his arms again, “Besides it’s for emergencies only.”

 

“And what counts as an emergency to an incubus?” Logan counters.

 

“I’m not about to explain that in a room that has  _ Patton  _ in it!”

 

“Patton’s a grown Djinn. He is most likely older than even you.”

 

Patton made a sound in the back of his throat, “Please don’t fight guys! I hate fighting!”

 

“Very well,” Logan turned back to Virgil, “Apologies Virgil.” He shifts his glasses and Virgil starts to think that it might me a nervous tick for him, constantly making sure that his glasses were covering his line of vision completely. 

 

“I do not understand why you neglected to tell any of us about this.” He says, “If my research is correct, without a skin a selkie cannot return to life in the ocean.”

 

“Whoa, wait hold on!” Roman throws up a time out sign, “Why do people care so much about this- ugh- skin? So what, if he doesn’t have one! There’s got to be plenty of other selkies out there without one!”

 

“It’s not--” Virgil takes a shuddering breath, “Selkies can’t survive without their skins. Salt water literally dissolves us in this form.”

 

Roman stares at him for a second. “Then why the hell do you people live in the ocean?!”

 

“Language,” Patton wrings the hem of his shirt with his delicate fingers again, “What would humans want with a selkie skin?”

 

“What wouldn’t they want?” Virgil snorts, miserably  “They're soft, heavy, and virtually indestructible. Humans love that shit.”

 

Patton taps him on the arm twice, a warning smile on his face, “I know you kiddos are having a rough time right this second, but the next one who uses one of those bad words I’m going to have to wash your mouth with soap!”

 

“That’s quite unnecessary Patton,” Logan says, “While I agree that the usage of such profanity could be better regulated, we are all adults here and there is no need for such a childish tech--”

 

“You’re not my mom!” Roman yells gleefully over him, as if he was looking to challenge Patton’s power. “I can say whatever I want! Fuck! Hell! Da--”

 

In a second Virgil’s senses are bombarded with that blue raspberry sugar smell that’s so strong he can taste it. Patton’s body doesn’t move but he tenses ever so slightly. Virgil watches in amazing meant as Roman face screws up and his tirade is cut short with gagging. The incubus doubles over and spits out half a bar of soap on the ground.

 

Logan makes a face at the cleaner and then at Roman, “I stand corrected.”

 

“Fu--” Roman spits bubbles out of his mouth, and frantically wipes his tongue on his sleeve, “Fudge! I said Fudge! What was that?! Cucumber?! I hate cucumber!”

 

Patton nudges Virgil with a wink, “Oh sorry, RoRo! I had absolutely no idea about that!” 

 

Virgil can’t help but smile. For a moment he forgets about everything bad that was going on. It just the four of them camping out in between the rooms in various states of ease.

 

As suddenly as all their smiles come, they melt off again and Virgil is left staring at a stone statue and dead end. His shoulders hunch with an ache he can’t fix and he still hasn’t eaten for the day. Logan turned a man to stone, Roman can tranquilize people with a bite (ew), and Patton--Patton just gives him a squeeze.

 

“I can’t…” the Djinn says, “I can’t conjure things I don’t know the exact location of. But if there’s anything else I can do to help you, Virgil, I will.”

 

And for some reason the sentence makes Virgil want to cry some more. “W-what?”

 

His shoulders tense as Patton removes his arm and undoes his cardigan cape. In a smooth movement he plops it over Virgil’s shoulders and smiles that blinding smile of his. “I live to help people kiddo! And I’d say you need some helping right about now!”

 

Logan clears his throat, and leans casually, deceptively dismissively against the wall. “I, too, would like to offer my services in your aid, Virgil.” He says, “Perhaps in return you might further enlighten me on the habits of selkies. There’s barely any knowledge about your customs anywhere.”

 

“You don’t--”

 

Roman groans loudly, “Stormy Weather! Just accept it! We’re going to help you get your weird swimsuit back.”

 

“It’s a skin.”

 

“Whatever!”

 

Virgil frowns up at him, “why would  _ you  _ want to help me?”

 

He has the gall to look offended again. “Because I’m a nice person!” He runs a hand through his hair, sparkles dancing in the dim light around them. “Also I want my blanket back.”

 

Patton claps his hands, far too happy for anyone at the late hour, “Oh! It can be like a family adventure!”

 

“Family?” Logan repeats incredulously.

 

Patton motions to the four of them, “Family! Us! Inhumans have to stick together!”

 

“You do realize that once Virgil gets his skin back he will not be returning correct? That’s how selkies work.”

 

Virgil blinks surprised. Logan’s right, of course. Even if Virgil hadn’t hated this stupid world, he’d never want to come back. He misses the ocean, he misses the darkness, the coolness of the waters welcoming him home. But even knowing this, he can’t figure out why there’s a bit of guilt in his stomach when Patton’s face falls.

 

“Oh, well,” Patton brightens just as easily again, “Then I’ll make sure to treasure all the time we have together while we have it!” He stands up and offers Virgil a hand. “What do you say, kiddo? Let’s get your skin!”

 

Virgil flits between the three of them. He knows humans suck, he’s experienced his fair share of their suckiness. But beyond that he’s never...hung out with other inhumans. He doesn’t know anything about Gorgon’s gazes or incubi or djinn. He doesn’t know where they would start trying to help him,  _ if  _ they could even help him. His head still hurts and his limbs are sore.

 

But the cardigan around his shoulders means something. It’s a weight, not a perfect weight of his skin, but it's  _ something.  _

 

He takes Patton’s hand.

 

For the first time in nine months he doesn’t feel completely weightless.


End file.
